-By Warner Todd Huston
Al Jazeera America has landed another member of the American media as Soledad O’Brien joins the foreign-owned cable network that is set to debut later this year.
The Soon to launch Al Jazeera America, owned by the Oil-rich, Muslim country of Qatar, has snapped up O’Brien since she was fired by CNN for low ratings last March.
Politico reported that Ehab Al Shihabi, executive director of Al Jazeera’s international operations and the senior executive, praised the hire saying, “O’Brien’s career producing and reporting on the human side of many of the most important stories of the past decade will fit in perfectly with what Al Jazeera America will be covering every day.”
“Her dedication to that type of journalism is what makes it so exciting to announce that she and her production company are joining the Al Jazeera America team,” Al Shihabi said.
“I look forward to beginning a relationship with Al Jazeera America, which has made a commitment to producing quality programming and pursuing underreported stories,” O’Brien said in a press release.
O’Brien will join Al Jazeera as a “special correspondent” and will do occasional hour-long documentaries for the foreign network.
Just before CNN dumped her show, O’Brien, who Twitter amusingly calls the “special snowflake,” hosted a panel where Breitbart’s own Joel Pollak was called a racist in a discussion on “critical race theory.” Hotair’s Ed Morrissey noted at the time that O’Brien was “woefully unprepared” for the discussion and seemed to have no idea what she was talking about. Morrissey also pointed out that Pollak’s South African bride, Amy Holmes, would probably laugh at the idea that her husband was a “racist.”
Early this year Al Jazeera America announced that it was looking to hire as many as 800 American journalists and media personnel, hired Al Velshi, a former CNN business correspondent, as well as former NBC reporter Michael Viqueira.
But one Al Jazeera employee is not joining the new American version of Al Jazeera. Former Al Jazeera anchor Dave Marash, who came to the network from Britain, quit Al Jazeera because he realized that it was not a free and open news source but was controlled by the Qatari government all the way down the line.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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